Netflix has unveiled the trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From 85, an animated series that will arrive on April 23. Produced by the Duffer brothers and Eric Robles, and animated by Flying Bark Productions, it transports the protagonists to the winter of 1985. This format is not merely a spin-off, but an opportunity to explore the universe from a unique visual and narrative perspective, where animation becomes the key tool to delve deeper into the characters and expand the mythology.
Flying Bark and the art of evoking the 80s in animation 🎨
The commission to Flying Bark Productions, a studio with a solid track record in 2D and 3D animation, is a key technical decision. The trailer suggests a style that pays homage to the animation of the era, but with modern techniques. This implies flexible rigging to achieve exaggerated facial expressions loaded with nostalgia, and an art direction that transcends the copy of live action. Animation allows stylizing the horrors of the Upside Down and amplifying the action, as in snowball sequences or new dangers under the ice, with camera freedom and physics impossible in live action.
Animation as an expanded narrative language ✨
Beyond aesthetics, the shift to animation redefines narrative rules. It allows delving into the characters' psychology through visual symbolism and animated metaphors, exploring their fears in an abstract way. This format is ideal for developing those moments of danger that the original series only sketched, giving them a new scale and duration. Tales From 85 is not just a parallel story; it is a demonstration of how character animation can recontextualize and enrich an established universe.
How do traditional animation principles adapt to a graphic style inspired by the 80s to create believable and expressive characters in Stranger Things: Tales From 85?
(P.S.: Animating characters is easy: you just have to move 10,000 controls to make them blink.)